


Last One Home

by Welfycat



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Additional Warnings Apply, Episode: s03e06 Motel California, Gen, Past Child Abuse, References to Suicide, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-11
Updated: 2013-07-11
Packaged: 2017-12-19 04:24:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/879426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Welfycat/pseuds/Welfycat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Isaac didn't go to sleep after they got on the bus in the middle of the night, nor did he sleep on the ride back to Beacon Hills.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Last One Home

**Author's Note:**

> Content Notes: Suicide attempt, discussion of canonical suicide attempts of other characters, self injury during a suicide attempt, child abuse (physical, verbal, emotional), suicidal ideation, self-blame and self-degenerating language. If you have triggers regarding suicide, self harm, child abuse, or self-worth, please use caution if you decide to read this story.  
> Author Notes: Occurs directly after 306 Motel California.

"I can walk," was the last thing Isaac had said to Scott in the school parking lot as they'd stood around Stiles' jeep. Ethan had disappeared shortly after they arrived at the high school, Boyd vanishing not long after that. That had left Scott, Stiles, Allison, and Lydia quietly theorizing about murders and wolfsbane and the Alpha Pack, while Isaac stood nearby and let their conversation wash over him in waves. He should have been paying attention, coming up with a plan of action, but instead all he could do was stare and think about how pointless it all was.

And so Scott and the others were off, something about murders and patterns, and Isaac set himself in the direction of the McCall house on foot and walked at a steady, human pace. The daylight was bright, too bright like a filter had been removed and everything was over-saturated in light, and Isaac only vaguely noticed cars on the road, dogs on leashes, children running and playing in their neighborhoods. Life was moving all around him and yet it seemed like an entirely different world, like a thick plate of glass was between him and everything else, like when their voices reached him they were only echoes. It was fall, the air hot and stifling, and yet Isaac felt cold.

Before he realized that he'd walked the distance from the school to the McCall's house, Isaac was on the front steps and it took him a moment to remember that there was a key in his pocket. Mrs. McCall had pressed it into his hand a week and a half ago and told him that he could stay as long as he needed. With the key in his hand Isaac could remember how warm her small fingers were against his as she waited for him to grasp the key. He hadn't known Mrs. McCall very well before, still didn't really, but the more he saw the more he discovered how alike she and Scott were. There was kindness in their eyes, even for him, and Isaac wasn't quite sure what to do with that. He unlocked the door and stepped inside. The house was nearly quiet - just the hum of the refrigerator, the tick of a small clock in Mrs. McCall's bedroom, and the slight whine of electricity if he focused entire on what he could hear. Mrs. McCall usually worked the earlier shift on weekends, she wouldn't be home until dinner, and sometimes she would pick up an extra half shift on top of that. Isaac locked the front door behind him and set the key down on the small table near the door where Mrs. McCall would be able to find it - he wouldn't be needing it again.

He had been awake the entire night. By the time they crawled onto the school bus, Lydia and Stiles declaring it safer than going back into the motel, it had been nearly four in the morning. Isaac had rested against the window and the seat in front of him, sitting about as far away from Scott and everyone else as he could without being obvious. He'd had those quiet early hours, along with the long bus ride back to Beacon Hills, to think about everything - not just what had happened that night. The discussion from the middle of the bus had told him everything he needed to know about what had happened to the others in the motel - how Ethan and Boyd had tried to kill themselves while he cowered under the bed like a frightened child waiting for his father to come drag him out. He hadn't needed to be told about Scott's suicide attempt, he'd witnessed that one while waiting outside the motel room while Boyd changed into dry clothes. Listening to Scott explain why he wanted to die had been like a punch to the gut, and the sickly stench of gasoline that clung to Stiles and Scott had slowly filled the bus until Isaac had almost been left gagging.

Isaac had known that Scott had never wanted any of this, he had never chosen the bite and had done as much as he could to stay out of any werewolf related business. When Isaac had asked Derek about it over the summer, Derek had just told him to leave Scott alone and that if Scott wanted to be an Omega that was Scott's business. Isaac had listened and avoided Scott because Derek was his Alpha and from what Isaac had gleaned from Derek and Peter's conversations, you didn't associate with werewolves who weren't in your pack. Derek had been all Isaac had and Isaac wasn't going to do anything that would get him sent away from the pack. Except for he had, and he still didn't even know what it was that he'd done.

"Well that's not entirely true, now is it?" Isaac asked, the inflection of his voice not quite his own. "Don't lie to me."

Isaac made his way down the front hallway, placing his feet carefully so he didn't make any noise. His steps were practiced, beyond habitual, _don't wake the sleeping dragon_ , and he stopped with his hand on the doorknob to the garage. He knew why Derek had kicked him out, he had always known why - it wasn't something that he'd done, it wasn't something that he could fix ( _'it can't be fixed'_ ), it was just who he was. "Stupid, so fucking stupid," Isaac echoed, his hand clenching on the knob.

He was stupid to have come here, he had heard that from Scott as well. Scott had never said it to him, probably would never say it to him because he was too damned nice, but Isaac had heard it. _"What if doing this actually is the best thing that I could do for everyone else?"_ Scott had said. Isaac opened up the door to the garage and stepped inside, shoes silent as he stepped down the two concrete steps. "You were too much for her," Isaac felt his lips moving as he made his way to the freezer in the McCall's garage. "She couldn't live with such a goddamn burden all the time. This is your fault."

The freezer in the McCall's garage wasn't like the freezer Isaac had broken in the basement of his old house. This freezer still worked, still hummed with electricity, and as far as Isaac knew, no one had ever been locked inside. The one time the power had gone out, Mrs. McCall had asked him to go get one of the bags of ice from the freezer so they could pack everything in the fridge and freezer inside close together to keep it from spoiling. Scott had took one look at Isaac and quickly volunteered for the task and Isaac hadn't stopped him. The sound of the lid opening on the freezer chest made his heart race, made his stomach lurch, and Isaac knew that his eyes would flash amber when his heart took off like a horse at the starting line. Being claustrophobic was one thing, lots of people were claustrophobic. Being afraid of a fucking freezer was just pathetic.

Isaac opened the lid of the freezer and saw that there were still three bags of ice left. It was less than what Deaton had used when they were trying to recover the memories the Alphas had taken, but the bathtub in the upstairs bathroom was much smaller than the metal tub at the vet clinic as well. Isaac took two of the bags, leaving the third in case the power went out again and Mrs. McCall hadn't yet had a chance to go grocery shopping.

It was selfish of him to do this here, Isaac knew that. He hated to mess up the McCall's pristine house - a house that didn't have a stain on the wall from where a drink had been thrown, didn't have a dent from where someone's head had been slammed into a doorframe, didn't even have scratches on the floor from someone scrambling to get away. But the bathroom was out of the way, at the end of the hallway on the second floor, and he figured the cleanup would be fairly easy. It wasn't like he was going to stain the carpet, he wouldn't even let the bathtub overflow. But, it was still selfish, burdening Scott and Mrs. McCall with one more thing after everything they had done for him. Isaac set the bags of ice down next to the bathtub and found the stopper for the drain. "Selfish bastard. Can't you do anything right? What the fuck is wrong with you?"

"I'm sorry," Isaac replied, bringing his hands up to cover his ears. "I'm sorry, I'll do better."

"Damn right you will." Isaac stood, too aware that he was shaking just like he had been back at the motel. There was condensation forming on the sides of the bags of ice. It would leak on the floor soon if he didn't hurry up. He left the bags where they were and went back down the stairs, his hand gripping the handrail as he felt the ghost of hands behind his neck, forcing him down the steps. The kitchen was clean, which was good. There were no dishes left out, nothing that needed to be washed or put away, and Isaac continued over to the knife block on the counter. He plucked out the paring knife and tested the blade against against the pad of his thumb. It cut through his skin easily, a whisper of blood slipping down his hand, and he watched as the cut healed a few seconds later. He wiped the leftover blood on the fabric of his pants so he wouldn't leave spots on the floor and left the kitchen. He was selfish for doing this here, but maybe it was less selfish than making them search for his body in the woods. Besides, apart from wolfsbane, this was the best way he knew of that would kill a werewolf.

Stealing wolfsbane from Deaton would have been difficult, and time consuming, and Isaac knew better than to steal. He stopped halfway up the steps, sounds and images flooding over him until he couldn't come up for air. "I won't," he promised as he clung to the staircase, the words raw from his throat. He had to give his father credit though - he had never taken anything that wasn't his again. He had also felt sick at the smell of mint chocolate ice cream and felt his heart race every time he heard the looped music of an ice cream truck from that point forward, an unintended but fitting consequence of stealing two dollars front his father in order to get an ice cream cone.

When Isaac could stand again he picked up the knife from where it had fallen and continued up the stairs and back to the bathroom. He felt nauseated, like his nose and mouth were cloyed with gasoline again, but also more clearheaded than he had been for hours. This was why he had to do this. He was a burden, he was dangerous, he was a mess. He wasn't going to be the reason that Scott drowned and he wasn't going to be an Omega driven mad and who had to be Hunted and cut in half in some unnamed forest. There were only two choices Isaac had really made in his life - the first was to receive the bite, and the second to stay in Beacon Hills instead of trying to run away. He'd made the first because he'd been tired of being helpless and afraid, he'd made the second because he believed that maybe he could help make things better, even just a little. And now, as he turned on the cold tap water and poured the bags of ice into the bathtub, he was making his third choice.

Making the first two choices had perhaps delayed this choice by a few months, but Isaac thought that maybe it had been inevitable. He had never thought of what his life could be after he graduated high school, never made any plans or had any dreams being a firefighter or an astronaut or a musician. As a little kid he'd imagined being superman, of flying, and when things had been right his dad had held him up high and Isaac had spread his arms as he fly through the backyard, his dad's strong hands holding him up in the sky. The Alphas had taken memories from Isaac, but one of the things he did remember was that dying felt a lot like flying. The bathtub was full enough now that Isaac could mostly submerge himself. He turned off the water and pulled his shirt over his head. His bag in the guest room was still packed, he'd never unpacked - he'd learned that lesson from Derek - and he neatly folded his shirt and set it aside along with his shoes and socks. There wouldn't be much that Mrs. McCall and Scott would have to clean up, not really. It was better for everyone this way.

Isaac hissed as he put one bare foot in the tub and then the other. "Stop being such a goddamn baby." It took more effort than he wanted to think about to actually sit down in the water, everything in him screaming to get out of the cold and the pain. He had done this once before, because he'd wanted to do anything he could to help get Boyd and Erica back - he had been too late to save Erica, and the Boyd he'd once known was gone as well. There was no one here to hold him down this time, no lid to keep him inside, and he braced his hands against the edges of the tub. "Don't be such a fucking pussy."

He could pretend that the damp on his face was water that had been splashed up as he got inside the tub and he fumbled for the knife. It was easier than he expected to grip the handle and he braced his left arm against his leg and watched as the red cascaded down into the freezing water. The cold would slow his healing process along with his heart rate and Isaac didn't think that Deaton had exaggerated that this could easily be deadly. Everything was moving from painful to numb and Isaac set the knife in the soap dish and sunk lower into the water, his shoulders spasming as they made contact with the ice. The bathtub was too small for him to fit his entire body but if he bent his knees he could edge down so that his head met the water. He closed his eyes, breathed out, and slipped down those last few inches.

There it was. Quiet. He couldn't hear the sound of his father's voice, he couldn't hear the growl of an Alpha, he couldn't even hear the hum of electricity. There was nothing, nothing except for the memory of holding onto Scott's arm as he was forced back to where he didn't want to go. Scott's arm was warm and Scott's hand was holding him back and keeping him from going under. If this was dying, Isaac thought he could stay here forever.

"Isaac! Isaac!"

Sound was back now, along with the feeling of burning through his body, and instead of Scott holding onto his arm it felt like something was tearing into it.

"Isaac! Please!"

Isaac opened his eyes and felt like he'd been knocked back into his body from wherever he had been. For a second he thought he was looking up at Derek but then he realized that the red eyes he was looking into belonged to Scott. That wasn't right, somehow, but worse was the realization that Scott was crying. He had only seen Scott cry once, just last night behind the motel, and the fact that he was doing it again because of Isaac seemed wrong. "Your eyes," Isaac said, the words passing through his lips his own for once.

Scott let out a choking sob. "Isaac. Okay. Okay, we can do this. I'm going to stop the bleeding."

Isaac realized that Scott was half holding him, that his head was propped up against Scott's chest, and that Scott was using one of the beige towels to hold against Isaac's wrist. "You're going to make a mess," Isaac said, trying to move his arm away from the towel. Blood stains were hell to get out of light fabric.

"Don't worry about it, just, God." Scott released Isaac's other arm, the one that now had puncture wounds from Scott's claws, and instead wrapped his arm around Isaac's chest. "No wonder Stiles said I took years off his life last night."

"You shouldn't have done that," Isaac said as everything settled back down over him. He tried to sit up and pull away from Scott. He was getting Scott's clothes wet. "You should have just left me in there. It would have been better."

"Never," Scott said, letting Isaac lean away from him but not releasing the pressure on where he was holding the wound on his arm closed with the towel. "I remember what that feeling is like, how everyone would be better off if I was gone, but it's not true. It's not true about me and it's not true about you either."

Isaac shook his head and pushed his wet hair away from his face. He still wanted to get back in the water, he wanted that pain back because it would make this pain stop.

"I can't do this without you. And one day, I promise you'll have reason to keep going for yourself, but right now, please do this for me." Scott moved with Isaac, keeping his hand firm on the towel and his now dark, human eyes locked onto Isaac's. "I need you. I need your help."

He was suddenly exhausted and he wanted to close his eyes, but now falling into bed had about as much draw as climbing back into the ice water. At least either way he could stop thinking for a little while. Scott's hand was still warm and Isaac could feel where Scott's leg was pressed against his in the small space on the bathroom floor. "The floor is a mess," he said, looking at where droplets of blood had colored the spilled water on the tile.

Scott opened the towel and the gash in Isaac's arm was almost completely healed already. "Okay," Scott said, still sounding shaken. "Don't worry about it. My bathroom looks worse than this right now and I didn't even bleed in it."

Isaac knew that was true, he'd seen Scott's bathroom, but it didn't change how badly he wanted to clean up the floor before Mrs. McCall came home. He took the towel from Scott's hand and placed it over the worst spots. "I'll clean it up. I can go get more ice too. To replace the bags I used."

"Don't worry about it," Scott said again. "Let's just get in dry clothes for now and we can deal with the bathroom before my mom gets home. How are you doing now?" he asked, his lips twisted with concern.

Isaac unsteadily pushed himself to his feet, Scott mirroring him, and he looked down at the tub where there were still small pieces of ice floating on the surface. "I'm okay right now," he said, reaching down to pull the plug that would allow the bathtub to drain. The fact that Scott's heart was still racing would help to cover the lie, or at least Isaac hoped it would.

Scott nodded quickly. "Maybe you just had a delayed reaction to the wolfsbane? Lydia's the one who heard you, so maybe it was just an aftereffect of the motel?" 

"Yeah, that's probably it," Isaac agreed. He could tell how badly Scott wanted that to be true. "I'm going to go change."

Scott stepped aside and let Isaac out of the bathroom, his fingertips burning hot against Isaac's bicep as Isaac slipped by. "I'll see you in a minute, okay? I'm right here."

"Okay," Isaac agreed, closing his eyes as his voice cracked. He went into the guest bedroom and found dry clothes in his duffel bag, leaning against the wall as he waited for whatever Scott had done when he'd touched him to pass. There was something wrong with him when a single brush of Scott's hand, along with a promise, could undo him faster than a punch to the face. But then, there were a lot of things wrong with him and that was a list with which Isaac was all too familiar.


End file.
